"Weakness of character and waiting to see what would happen.""He talked too much," she answered decisively."But are there houses in London with ponds in them ?""Lots," said Mr.Magnus."Only the owners of the houses don't know it.There is a big pond in the Chapel.That's what Thurston came out of."This was beyond Maggie altogether.An agreeable thing, however, about Mr.Magnus was that he did not mind when you disliked his work.He seemed to expect that you would not like it.He was certainly a very unconceited man.
A more important and more interesting theme was Mr.Magnus' reason for being where he was.What was he doing here? What led him to the Chapel doors, he being in no way a religious man?
"It was like this," he told her."I was living in Golders Green, and suddenly one morning I was tired of the country that wasn't country, and the butcher boy and the postman.So I moved as far into the centre of things as I could and took a room in St.Martin's Lane close at hand here.Then one evening I was wandering about, a desolate Sunday evening when the town is given over to cats.Isuddenly came across the Chapel.I like going into London churches by chance, there's always something interesting, something you wouldn't expect.The Chapel simply astonished me.I couldn't imagine what they were all about, it wasn't the ordinary London congregation, it was almost the ordinary London service and yet not quite; there was an air of expectation and even excitement which is most unusual in a London church.Then there was Warlock.Of course one could see at once that he was an extraordinary man, a kind of prophet all on his own; he was as far away from that congregation as Columbus was from his crew when he first sighted the Indies.""I've met one or two prophets in my time, and their concern has always been with their audience first, themselves second and their vision last.Warlock is the other way round.He should have been a hermit, not the leader of a community.Well, it interested me.Icame again and again...I'm going to stay on now until the end.""The end?" asked Maggie.
"The end of myself or the Chapel, whichever comes first.I wrote a story once--a very bad one--about some merchants--why merchants Idon't know--who were flung on a desert island.It was all jungle and desolation, and then suddenly they came upon a little white Temple.
It doesn't matter what happened afterwards.I've myself forgotten most of it, but I remember that the sailors used the Temple in different ways to keep their hopes and expectations alive.Their expectations that one day a ship would come and save them...and so far as I remember they became imaginative about the Temple, and fancied that the Unknown God of it would help them to regain their private affairs: one of them wanted to get back to his girl, another to his favourite pub, another to his money-making, another to his collection of miniatures.And they used to sit and look at the Temple day after day and expect something to happen.When the ship came at last they wouldn't go into it because they couldn't bear to think that something should happen at last and they not be there to see it.Oh yes, one of them went back, I remember.But his actual meeting with his girl was so disappointing in comparison with his long expectation of it in front of the Temple that he took the next boat back to the island...but he never found it again.He travelled everywhere and died, a disappointed man, at sea."Mr.Magnus was fond of telling little stories, obscure and pointless, and Maggie supposed that it was a literary habit.On this occasion he continued to talk quite naturally for his own satisfaction."Yes, one can make oneself believe in anything.I have believed in all sorts of things.In England, of course, people have believed in nothing except that things will always be as they always have been--a useful belief considering that things have never been as they always were.In the old days, when the Boer War hadn't interfered with tradition, it must have seemed to any one who wasn't a young man pretty hopeless, but now I don't know.Imagination's breaking in...Warlock's a prophet.I've got fascinated, sitting round this Chapel, as badly as any of them.Yes, one can be led into belief of anything.""And what do you believe in, Mr.Magnus?" asked Maggie.
"Well, not in myself anyway, nor Thurston, nor Miss Avies...But in your Aunt perhaps, and Warlock.The only thing I'm sure of is that there's something there, but what it is of course I can't tell you, and I don't suppose I shall ever know.The story of Sir Galahad, Miss Cardinal--it seems mid-Victorian to us now--but it's a fine story and true enough."Maggie, who knew nothing of mid-Victorianism, was silent.
He ended with: "Mind you decide for yourself.That's the great thing in life.Don't you believe anything that any one tells you.See for yourself.And if there's something of great value, don't think the less of it because the people who admire it aren't worth very much.
Why should they be? And possibly after all it's only themselves they're admiring...There's a fearful lot of nonsense and humbug in this thing, but there's something real too..."He changed his note, suddenly addressing himself intently to her as though he had a message to deliver.
"Don't think me impertinent.But your Aunt Anne.See as much of her as you can.She's devoted to you, Miss Cardinal.You mayn't have seen it--she's a reserved woman and very shy of her feelings, but she's spoken to me...I hope I'm not interfering to say this, but perhaps at first you don't understand her.She loves you, you're the first human being I do believe that she's ever loved."What was there then in Maggie that started up in rebellion at this unexpected declaration? She had been sitting there, tranquil, soothed with a happy sense that her new life was developing securely for her in the way that she would have it.Suddenly she was alert, suspicious, hostile.
